Sylvester Stallone’s 1995 bash at the 2000 AD comic-book icon pleased almost no one: the movie was a chintzy fiasco with its eye on too young an audience. Tougher, leaner and altogether better, this fresh attempt makes no bones about how violent the material should be.

Mega City One is a sprawling dystopian metropolis, overrun with vagrants, criminals and assorted reprobates, and none of them behaves as if they’ve got half an eye on a PG13 certificate. Neither does Dredd (Karl Urban), the feared Dirty Harry of the city’s combined law enforcement and justice department.

Mark Digby’s tremendous production design has derelict tower blocks soaring up through the smog – give the man an Oscar nomination – and it’s in one of these, a 200-storey high-rise slum called Peachtrees, that the action is mostly confined.

The best coups are all thanks to a reality-altering drug called Slo-Mo, which retards the user’s perception of time a hundredfold. Anthony Dod Mantle’s 3D photography in these sequences is glitteringly beautiful.

The overall recommendation would be stronger still if Alex Garland’s script didn’t stall in the middle, and if Urban were able to exude a bit more than gritted-teeth stolidity behind the mask. But it’s really quite good.